Abstract
International Studies Quarterly, September 2005, Blackwell Publishing.
In September, the sixth round of peace talks between the Sudanese government and rebel groups was barely a day old when new reports emerged of murders and rapes in Dar-fur. The cease-fire agreement of April 2004 has proved largely meaningless; the United Nations estimates that since the conflict first flared in early 2003, two million people have been displaced and tens of thousands have died.
It has been just over a year since then-Secretary of State Colin Powell unambiguously labeled Darfur a genocide–and yet the international community remains paralyzed over how to avert another tragedy such as that which consumed Rwanda more than 10 years ago.
Such indecision often characterizes the response to large-scale crises, writes Matthew Krain, an associate professor of political science at the College of Wooster, in his article “International Intervention and the Severity of Genocides and Politicides” (International Studies Quarterly, September 2005). “Indeed, the most frequent choice made by international actors is to do nothing in the face of an ongoing genocide or politicide,” a decision often made by officials who have concluded that intervention would be futile.
Nations are unwilling to endanger their armed forces for what they perceive as a lost cause. Moreover, no systematic studies exist to guide them as to whether direct military action works to stop or slow the killing. This is Krain's central query: Does “overt military action” save the lives of people targeted by “state-sponsored mass murder”? The answer, he concludes, is yes.
Direct action from outside countries or coalitions signals “that the international context has changed from permissive to prohibitive, and that the genocidaires no longer remain unchallenged,” Krain says. Challenging a state that is killing its own also forces it to divert time and resources away from murder and toward a defense against the intervention. “The effect would be akin to throwing a wet blanket over an emerging fire–it could prevent the spread of and perhaps even lead to a cessation of the killing.”
It's not enough to simply send in neutral troops to a trouble spot, Krain says; interveners must act clearly either against the perpetrator or in favor of the targeted victims. His statistical analysis, which tested six different kinds of intervention using three different models, confirmed “that attempts by external actors to intervene as impartial parties seem to be ineffective.” Those organizations that do not wish to use force or to choose sides should consider waiting on the sidelines until the conflict is over: “While impartial interveners such as the U.N. can and should remain integral to military-led humanitarian interventions,” he argues, “their emphasis on impartiality may be best suited to rebuilding and reconciliation efforts after the genocide or politicide has been ended.”
“I'm just working as a terrorism expert until I can get a job as an actor.”
Krain's complex statistical analysis ultimately yields a simple conclusion: The more times a genocidal state is militarily challenged from the outside, the more likely it is that the killing will slow or stop. Not a surprising assessment, perhaps. But, confronted with such analysis, policy makers cannot so confidently cry “futility” when others sound the alarm.